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When Rico Carter arrived at his burning house early on the morning of Dec. 20, 2017, he raced toward it, hoping to save his mother, girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter.

But in a chaotic scene capture in a police car dashcam video, Carter was intercepted near the front porch by officers and firefighters. Although he tried to fight them off, they stopped him from entering the fully engulfed house on Bennett Street in Homewood.

Officers put Carter in the back of a patrol car that night for a short time to allow him to calm down.

“I just felt like my mother was gone,” Carter testified on Wednesday. “I felt her leave me. It was a whole lot of emotions I can’t explain.”

Carter’s mother, Sandra Carter Douglas, 58, girlfriend, Shamira Staten, 21, and Staten’s 4-year-old daughter, Ch’yenne Manning, were killed.

Trial began this week for Martell Smith, 45, who is accused of setting the fire following a fight with Rico Carter earlier that night at a bar called The Spot in Penn Hills. If found guilty of first-degree murder, Smith could face the death penalty.

Smith denies having set the fire, and his defense attorney, Randall McKinney, said he will testify during the trial before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jill E. Rangos.

On Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Brian Catanzarite played video from both inside and outside The Spot from that night.

In the video, Carter can be seen talking with Smith inside the bar around 1:24 a.m.

“We was cordial,” Carter said about his interaction with Smith.

Carter testified that he wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Later, when they were outside, around 1:40 a.m., the video showed Carter punching Smith.

“Martell came out, said something, it escalated, and we got in a fight,” Carter told the jury. “He said something that angered me.”

The prosecution said during opening statements that that fight, which left Smith with a bloodied face, torn shirt and broken necklace, drove him to set the fire.

After leaving the bar in a white Pontiac Grand Prix, city cameras and private surveillance cameras tracked the route Smith took as he drove to a nearby Sunoco station. Video from there showed Smith walk inside at 2:08 a.m., buy a one-gallon gas can with cash and return to the pumps outside.

Although the angle in the video was obstructed by the gas pump, Sgt. Timothy Cole of the Pittsburgh Police computer crime unit, said he believed Smith was filling the can.

The cameras then tracked the car to Brushton Avenue, near the fire scene.

The prosecution said that Smith entered the house through an unlocked front door, doused a couch with gasoline and set it on fire. He then remained in the area, Catanzarite told the jury, and bragged to witnesses that he set the fire.

Video from the fire scene showed Smith walking through the area several times around 3:25 a.m. He remained on the scene until at least 3:45 a.m.

When he was later arrested, police said there was gasoline on his shirt sleeve and on his shoe.

The trial is scheduled to resume Thursday morning.

Paula Reed Ward is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paula by email at pward@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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